ALLERS VENUES

A month in the country. In summer, a group of friends rent a house in southern France. People come and go, making their way through chickens, dogs and cats. Playful sounds and a whacky collage of music make up the soundtrack.

TOP TEN DESIGNERS IN PARIS

This film was shot in 1979, when there were very few documentaries made on the realm of haute couture.
It was made by a group of filmmakers- three men and three women- just to catch a glimpse of a stylish milieu unknown to most. Enticing top models such as Jerry Hall and Ines de la Fressange prepare to be catapulted on the catwalk; hairdressers, photographers and a whole armada of people prepare the show.
The 10 designers are: Issey Miyake, Karl Lagerfeld, Angelo Tarlazzi, Tan Giudicelli, Jean-Paul Gaulthier, Marithé and François Girbaud, France Andrévie, Claude Montana, Kenzo, and Thierry Mugler.
Nostalgia for the fashionistas.

MOVIE (V.O.)

With a super 8 camera from Paris to Berlin, from Amsterdam to Rio, from Jerusalem to New York shooting only at night. Hungarian crooners, Indian tribal chants, opera arias, and an occasional samba make up the sound track of this “hand-held” diary.

ALLERS VENUES

A month in the country. In summer, a group of friends rent a house in southern France. People come and go, making their way through chickens, dogs and cats. Playful sounds and a whacky collage of music make up the soundtrack.

U.S.S.A.

USA + USSR = USSA. My film is about blurred boundaries, probably due to my own personal history.
I was born in New York, to Russian and Czech parents, raised in Brazil and educated in France.
As a result, the film is a cultural cocktail shot on super 8 in Moscow, New York, Milan, Berlin and Paris.

*** (TROIS ETOILES)

Sarah and Paul leave their native California once a year to eat their way through France. They test the Michelin guide’s recommendations for three-star restaurants (the top rating) and between meals still have time to do some wine tasting at the best cellars. The filmmaker follows them around in a second car.

EAT

A humorous observation of humans’ and animals’ table manners as they gulp down breakfasts, lunches, cocktails and dinners in a variety of situations.
Ostrovsky uses her filmic diary and travelogue to cast her curious characters.

M.M. IN MOTION was four years in the making and draws upon Ostrovsky’s filming of six Monnier choreographies (from 1988 to 1991) in rehearsals and performances. M.M. attempts to translate Monnier’s essence, style and humor into cinematic terms using fragmentary, episodic and impressionistic images that capture the defining traits of her modus operandi.

UTA MAKURA (Pillow Poems)

In 10th. Century Japan, Sei Shonagon, lady-in-waiting to the Empress, wrote of the goings-on at the Japanese court. Fearing vengeance, she hid these secret notes in her pillow. UTA MAKURA is also a collection of humorous observations on modern-day Japan ranging from waterfalls to shopping malls, from kids in kimonos to fresh makimonos, from ancient wisteria to teen- age hysteria, from homemade noodles to live painted poodles.

WORK AND PROGRESS

A trip to Russia by two filmmakers, in 1990, ends up in a twin- screen projection using their super 8 footage mixed in with archival material and a sprinkling of classics such as Vertov and Eisenstein.

The film is a travelogue of sorts.
In 1960 my family lived in Brazil when my father discovered his sister and brother in Moscow, who he hadn’t seen for 40 years, were still alive. Since they couldn’t leave the USSR we went to visit them regularly for about 15 years. At the time I had my 8mm then a super 8 camera with which I filmed the family, our outings, picnics, markets and their homes…
I decided to use this material, which was not very interesting per se, by mixing it with Soviet found-footage of the same period (1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s). I used feature films, propaganda footage, newsreels, etc. The result is a kind of Khruschev-era mix with a collage of Soviet music and a voice-over of my memories of the Cold War period.

ICE/SEA

A celluloid aperitif for the summer combining found footage of seashores using the filmmaker’s own archive of coastal material.
Fun and free-associative, the movie ventures to Rio, Miami, Montpellier, the Dead Sea, the Black Sea, and elsewhere, keeping a visual diary of sun-seekers, boardwalk architecture, and celebrity sightings.
A beach extravaganza starring, suicidal skiers, soaking tigers, plunging mermaids and much more.

Télépattes is a bit of feline rhetorical fantasy.
Starring among others, two cats, a couple of dogs, a weasel, a baby bear, a macaw and other creatures.
Voices: Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Sarah Kofman.
First shown in Paris at the Centre Pompidou, the film was commissioned by the Pocket Film Festival and was made entirely on a mobile phone.

The video was made for an exhibition in Rio on Paulo Werneck one of Oscar Niemeyer’s collaborators. Werneck was the first to introduce mosaics in Brazilian Modernist architecture. P.W. shows the context of the artist’s work in Rio and Belo Horizonte in the 50s and the 60s as well as Brasilia at the time of its construction in 1960. It’s an inventive collage of archival footage, music and Werneck’s modernist mosaics.

THE TITLE WAS SHOT

The Title Was Shot was commissioned for a conference of film theoreticians in Berlin in 2009 entitled: The Cinematic Configurations of ‘I’ and ‘We’. Composed of fragments from over 25 films dating from the 1920s to the 90s, this mischievous short features cowboys, Indians and damsels in distress.
Tarzan, Jane, a transgender gorilla, and a menacing lion tango from frame to frame, prodded by Wittgenstein, Gilles Deleuze and Slavoj Zizek’s philosophical considerations. A fast-paced, heart-pounding cinephilic farce.

TATITUDE

A delightful update of Jacques Tati’s classic Les Vacances de M. Hulot (Mr. Hulot’s Holidays). Seagulls squawk, waves crash and swimmers cavort in endless summer days spent on the beach. TATITUDE suggests that sand, water and sun are the basic elements in a happy, carefree life, and maybe even the secret to eternal youth.

CORrespondência e REcorDAÇÕES

Based on a correspondence between Brazilian artist Ione Saldanha and the filmmaker, this portrait was made for an exhibition at the MAM (Museum of Modern Art) in Rio de Janeiro.
Ione Saldanha (1919-2001) was a contemporary of Lygia Clark, Sonia Delaunay, and Vieira da Silva, all of who were her friends. She abandoned painting on canvas for more sculptural supports like batten and bamboos which she shaped with color. Matisse was constantly present in her mind and work for inspiration.
This vignette was meant to give an idea of the artist as a person and of her work.

LOSING THE THREAD

Super 8 reels of Paris catwalks I shot in 1979/1980 were supposed to become an experimental short meditation on couture culture. Its authority has unraveled some since and Deleuze’s definition of style: “creating a foreign language in one’s own language,” encouraged me to loosen the threads of this pursuit. To ponder how fashion and style are interwoven but also influenced by individual flare and whimsy, I stitched together Coco Chanel, Courrèges, Cole Porter and Kaiser Karl with vintage film moments. Then, as now, to grasp the whole cloth of this interface involves finding, but also Losing the Thread…

But elsewhere is always better

A new short film by Vivian Ostrovsky remembering Chantal Akerman, beginning with
their first meeting in the early 1970s. Using her own footage of Chantal Akerman, the
filmmaker remembers a few moments that illustrate Chantal’s personality. Forty years
of friendship condensed into four minutes…

DizzyMess

Dizziness, in the sense that it inspires artists and filmmakers to move beyond their known borders.
Or how a state of altered perception, instability, and confusion can be a catalyst for exploring new surroundings.
Let go of the ground and attain giddiness or perhaps even foolishness?

Hiatus

The protagonist of this film is the reclusive, introspective Ukranian – Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector
(1920 – 1977). It is based on a single TV interview broadcast only after her death.
What she says in the 1977 interview is still very pertinent and corresponds to a feeling of ‘in-betweenness’ which I
myself feel today.